One resident of Nebraska's Cass County was so frustrated after his absentee ballot wasn't counted in the Nov. 2004 election, he decided to do something about it. After writing letters to a variety of media outlets and none expressed interest, he put the original letters he received from his elections officials explaining up for bidding on eBay. The documents are currently going for $28.13 , with 6 days of bidding remaining. The bidder explains:I posted these documents on eBay because everyone in the media seems to get so excited when someone sells their family online, or advertising space on their head. No one gets excited when they get these very documents sent to them in the mail or in eMail. I thought this would give my voting problems a little more exposure, since other media outlets I have sent copies to have not responded. Ashland Gazette where are you? All profit form this sale will go to the Nebraska Green Party. They were the first ones to respond to my requests for help. Out of all the letters I sent, they were the ones who cared and showed it. They need help getting signatures on their petition in order to keep the Green Party an official political party in Nebraska with ballot access.

It took long enough. But "in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday [here's the prepared version], the Army’s civilian chief pledged that by next week, no soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan would drive outside the base perimeter in an unprotected vehicle," Defense Daily reports.

What happens when a man eats nothing but McDonald's food for 30 days? It's a lesson that schoolchildren across the country are about to find out.Morgan Spurlock, director and star of "Super Size Me: A film of epic proportions," is releasing an edited version of the film for classrooms. The school version of the Academy-Award nominated film is scheduled to be released after the Feb. 27 Oscars ceremony.

A shipment of radioactive material ordered by Halliburton Co. that went missing in New Jersey was found in Boston on Wednesday, the company said in a filing to federal regulators this week.The shipment of americium came from Russia via Amsterdam and arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy airport, but disappeared sometime after it cleared U.S. Customs on October 9, according to a Halliburton filing made to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday.

Teaching the age and history of our planet takes us back about 4.6 billion years; it is included in only 55% of our 50 State’s science education standards....Evolution is fundamental to modern biology, geology and astronomy. Ignoring or discarding fundamental scientific understandings of the natural world does not prepare our children well for the future. As America strives to "leave no child behind," it’s time that evolution is not left behind in our science classrooms.

At this juncture in history, the world has become so small and interdependent that we need a Global Celebration to promote a common bond between all people. The Darwin Day Celebration was founded on the premise that science, like music, is an international language that speaks to all people in very similar ways. While music is both intellectual and entertaining, science is our most reliable knowledge system, and it has been and continues to be acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity. Moreover, evolution, introduced by Charles Darwin, has become the central organizing principle for all basic scientific research; particularly in biology but also in physics and cosmology. In addition, Darwin himself has become an internationally acclaimed figure, whose influence on progressive modern thought continues to be both profound and pervasive (Ernst Mayr, Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought, Scientific American, July 2000).Current research in the field of genetics, including that on the human genome, has conclusively shown that all humans are essentially identical and that we are genetically related to all other living things on this planet. Thus an enlightened view of genetics is one of unity and equality among all humans and also one that fosters a deeper sense of respect and appreciation for all life. Today the validity of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection rests in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of genetics. Therefore, we conclude that Charles Darwin is a worthy symbol on which to focus, in order to build a Global Celebration of Science and Humanity that is intended to promote a common bond between all people of the earth.

On the February 9 edition of Air America Radio's TheAl Franken Show, Franken called on FOX News Washington managing editor Brit Hume to resign for falsely claiming that former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt expressed support for Social Security privatization. Listen here.

"Death of a Salesman," which took Miller only six weeks to write, earned rave reviews when it opened on Broadway in February 1949, directed by Elia Kazan.The story of Willy Loman, a man destroyed by his own stubborn belief in the glory of American capitalism and the redemptive power of success, was made into a movie and staged all over the world."I couldn't have predicted that a work like `Death of a Salesman' would take on the proportions it has," Miller said in 1988. "Originally, it was a literal play about a literal salesman, but it has become a bit of a myth, not only here but in many other parts of the world."

First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.

n a letter to President Bush yesterday, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., called for an explanation of how a Talon News reporter who used the pseudonym "Jeff Gannon" was admitted to White House briefings.Gannon resigned late Tuesday amid a flurry of accusations about his professional credentials and links to the Republican Party and could not be reached for comment."It appears that 'Mr. Gannon's' presence in the White House press corps was merely as a tool of propaganda for your administration," wrote Slaughter, a senior member of the House Rules Committee who has been active in media fairness and ownership issues.White House press secretary Scott McClellan said he had not seen the letter from Slaughter, but dismissed her suggestion that Gannon was allowed into White House news briefings to help promote Bush's political agenda.

Federal officials were repeatedly warned in the months before the 11 September 2001 terror attacks that Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida were planning aircraft hijackings and suicide attacks, according to a new report that the Bush administration has been suppressing.

A newly-released memo warned the White House at the start of the Bush administration that al Qaeda represented a threat throughout the Islamic world, a warning that critics said went unheeded by President Bush until the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The memo dated Jan. 25, 2001 was an essential feature of last year's hearings into intelligence failures. A copy of the document was posted on the National Security Archive Web site at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm on Feb. 10, 2005. Page one of the three-page memo is shown. Click on the image to open the 3-page memo as a .pdf file.

Critics say the new information undermines the government's claim that intelligence about al-Qa'ida's ambitions was "historical" in nature.The independent commission investigating the attacks on New York and Washington concluded that while officials at the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) did receive warnings, they were "lulled into a false sense of security". As a result, "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures".The report, withheld from the public for months, says the FAA was primarily focused on the likelihood of an incident overseas. However, in spring 2001, it warned US airports that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable".

Google Inc. has made a proposal to host some of the content of the Wikimedia projects.The terms of the offer are currently being discussed by the board. The developer committee has been informed of some of the details via email. A private IRC meeting with Google is planned for March, 2005.Please note that this agreement does not mean there is any requirement for us to include advertising on the site.More details will be put here when the offer is allowed to be made public.

The Public Interest Declassification Board, an advisory body created in the FY 2001 Intelligence Authorization Act to help set declassification priorities and mediate conflicts, suffered the ignominy of not havingits members named for four years.But now that six of its nine members have been named (SN, 02/02/05), the Board faces the further insult of being denied the budget it needs to commence its work.No money was appropriated for the Board in the current fiscal year, and no money has been requested for the Board in the next fiscal year. That adds up to no money at all.The link is to the legislation that established the board. [from SecrecyNews]

Scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they have been told to change their research findings concerning the protection of plants and animals. A survey of USFWS biologists, ecologists, botanists and other science professionals sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility finds:"Nearly half of all respondents whose work is related to endangered species scientific findings (44 percent) reported that they 'have been directed, for non-scientific reasons, to refrain from making jeopardy or other findings that are protective of species.' One in five agency scientists revealed they have been instructed to compromise their scientific integrity—reporting that they have been 'directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a USFWS scientific document,' such as a biological opinion;"More than half of all respondents (56 percent) knew of cases where "commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention."

The U.S. House of Representatives approved on Thursday a sweeping set of rules aimed at forcing states to issue all adults federally approved electronic ID cards, including driver's licenses.Under the rules, federal employees would reject licenses or identity cards that don't comply, which could curb Americans' access to airplanes, trains, national parks, federal courthouses and other areas controlled by the federal government. The bill was approved by a 261-161 vote.The measure, called the Real ID Act, says that driver's licenses and other ID cards must include a digital photograph, anticounterfeiting features and undefined "machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements" that could include a magnetic strip or RFID tag. The Department of Homeland Security would be charged with drafting the details of the regulation.

The leading candidates for the next revolution are enthralling, depressing and mind-boggling. Seth Shostak, of the alien-hunting Seti organisation in California, believes that we will become the first species to invent our successor, intentionally demoting ourselves to intellectual second fiddle. Others say we will finally understand the workings of the mind, and with it grasp fully the nature of self. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City University of New York, believes that we will discover parallel universes, perhaps floating just inches away from our own. Elvis Presley might even be alive and well in one of them, he says. The Oxford University neuroscientist Susan Greenfield sees a bleak future. We will see a melding of man and machine, she says, leading to the demise of the individual.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Here’s the heavenly clutter count as of December 29, 2004.
There were 9,233 objects large enough to be tracked and catalogued by the USSTRATCOM Space Surveillance Network. Of this total there were 2,927 payloads, along with 6,306 object classed as rocket bodies and debris.
That’s the stats as listed in the January issue of The Orbital Debris Quarterly News, issued by the NASA Johnson Space Center Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston, Texas.

Saying they had "bargain[ed] in good faith," Wal-Mart announced it was closing a store in Quebec whose employees were negotiating the first union contract ever with the giant retailer. Wal-Mart said the move is not a union bust, but due to "the fragile condition of the Jonquiere store." A union spokesperson said, "We're going to carry on with our efforts to organize Wal-Marts." The Canadian firm National PR is helping Wal-Mart with "French-language media outreach" following the announcement. O'Dwyer'snotes that the closing "comes as Hill & Knowlton is guiding a national campaign in the U.S. to help the company put out the 'unfiltered truth' and correct 'urban legends.'"

Spanish engineer José del R. Millán has recently been elected by Scientific American as one of the research leaders in 2004 for his experiences that allowed a small robot to move around a model house, while the bot itself handled time-sensitive maneuvers such as avoiding obstacles.
Each user chooses three mental states that produce distinguishable brain-wave patterns and trains the system in a few hour-long sessions. These states are then used as "forward," "left" and "right" commands.
Millán is currently leading the MAIA project to come up with a mind-controlled wheelchair, and a mind-controlled robotic arm that could be be used for future prosthesis. Don't hold your breath: the scientist doesn't expect the mond-controlled wheelchair to be ready before 2015.

In an attempt to promote President Bush's plan to partially privatize Social Security, nationally syndicated radio host and former Reagan administration official William J. Bennett and FOX News managing editor and anchor Brit Hume falsely claimed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt advocated replacing Social Security with private accounts. In fact, while Roosevelt advocated "voluntary contributory annuities" to supplement guaranteed Social Security benefits, he never proposed replacing those benefits with private accounts.

[PDF] In 1983, the Cato Institute (libertarian think tank) wrote a blueprint for eliminating Social Security entitled "Achieving a Leninist Strategy" [PDF]. It outlines a plan for creating a private model for Social Security combined with "guerilla warfare against both the Social Security system and the coalition that supports it." One section, "Calming Existing Beneficiaries" explains "the elderly represent a very powerful and vocal interest group. ...Any plan to change the system must therefore be neutral or (better still) clearly advantageous to senior citizens." This closely matches Bush's statement in the State of the Union Address "I have a message for every American who is 55 or older: Do not let anyone mislead you; for you, the Social Security system will not change in any way. (Applause.) "Senator Barbara Boxer. on Fresh Air, suggests this is the model the Bush administration is using to privatize / create-personal-accounts / eliminate Social Security.

Congress should enact changes to open government laws to make it easier for political appointees on the Federal Communications Commission to discuss issues in private, two FCC members said.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell, a Republican, and fellow Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, said the law hinders communication between individuals on the five-member FCC because only two members at a time can talk face-to-face outside the confines of a commission meeting.
Powell and Copps, in a letter to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said they supported the goal of open government laws, but added that Congress should change the law to let more than two commissioners meet privately "in appropriate circumstances."

Advanced computer modeling confirms that the world's largest blue diamond boasts an unsavory past. The supposedly cursed gem was cut from an even larger stone in the French crown jewels that was stolen during the French Revolution.

Civil rights activists and copyright reformers convened for a screening of the first installment of the landmark documentary Eyes on the Prize Tuesday night to send the message that it is "morally wrong" to deny people access to information and history.
Many of the 30 people (a handful of reporters among them) who crowded into attorney Don Jelinek's living room here worked in Mississippi and Alabama during the civil rights movement themselves -- registering black voters, staging sit-ins and marching, as well as getting harassed, shot at and jailed. These members of Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement meet monthly and decided to screen an illegal digital copy of the film when they learned that it was currently unavailable for broadcast or on DVD.

At the cost of about £1 ($1.80) per genetic test, many specimens for each species will now be analysed to obtain their barcode information.This data will then be put into a giant database which the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) hopes can be used to link off to all the knowledge acquired by science on particular organisms. And just as one might Google a species name today to find pictures or a description of an individual insect, the time may come when we have Star Trek-style mobile computers that can read off barcodes and access species information in the field.

Germany's federal prosecutor Thursday rejected calls to investigate allegations that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was guilty of war crimes over the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal.The U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and four Iraqis who say they were abused by American soldiers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison had filed a criminal complaint with German Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm in November.
They were seeking to take advantage of a 2002 German law allowing for the prosecution of human rights abuses and war crimes regardless of the where they occur.
The complaint said that Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, a senior defense official and seven U.S. military officers, including the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, were ultimately responsible for the torture and humiliation of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib.

In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission.
But aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security," and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures," the commission report concluded.
The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."
The report takes the F.A.A. to task for failing to pursue domestic security measures that could conceivably have altered the events of Sept. 11, 2001, like toughening airport screening procedures for weapons or expanding the use of on-flight air marshals. The report, completed last August, said officials appeared more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays, and easing airlines' financial woes than deterring a terrorist attack.

Most of the 200 people here are homeless or displaced , battling to rebuild lives and locating lost family members besides facing risks of epidemic,disease and trauma.
Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.
Heated arguments broke out as the locals forcibly tried to stop the relief trucks from leaving. The missionaries, who rushed into their cars on seeing television reporters and the cameras refusing to comment on the incident and managed to leave the village.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Members of a new federal voting commission meeting Wednesday to review problems with the 2004 election denounced the secretaries of state from Ohio and Florida, two states at the epicenter of complaints, for failing to show up."We can have disagreements, but you can't run and you can't hide," said House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney, R-Ohio.Ney, whose committee oversees election issues, said he would continue to push for Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and his Florida counterpart, Glenda Hood, to appear the Election Assistance Commission. Elections chiefs from four other states were to testify later Wednesday.

The head of CNN's news division, Eason Jordan, ignited an Internet firestorm last week when he told a panel at a World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, Switzerland, that the American military had targeted journalists during operations in Iraq.
Mr. Jordan, speaking in a panel discussion titled "Will Democracy Survive the Media?" said "he knew of about 12 journalists who had not only been killed by American troops, but had been targeted as a matter of policy," said Rep. Barney Frank, a Democrat of Massachusetts who was on the panel with Mr. Jordan.

Jeff Gannon (a pseudonym) announced last night via his personal website that he had found it "no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News. In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life."
It's this "private life" that may have precipitated Gannon's departure. In the last week, Investigative bloggers at World O'Crap, Daily Kos and Eschaton have dug up evidence that implicates Gannon as the owner of web domains hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescorts.com, and militaryescortsm4m.com, which are registered under the same owner as Gannon's home page www.jeffgannon.com. Two of the three web addresses are no longer active. The third, hotmilitarystud.com, requires registration before viewing the content. It now appears that the person registered as the individual owner of these domains, James "JD" Guckert, is in fact Gannon, according to investigative bloggers at Eschaton and elsewhere.

The homepage of the US Commission on Civil Rights website now contains this disclaimer in tiny type:

On January 7th, 2005, the Commission adopted a new policy on the public release and posting of reports and Commission documents. To comply with that new policy, the website has been updated and several draft reports that failed to receive a majority of Commissioners' votes have been removed. Those reports are available upon request.

I requested one of these reports yesterday, and so far I haven't heard back.So exactly which reports are gone? The site lists them here, and they all deal with topics probably not appreciated by the Republican Commissioners, who form a majority (including the Chairman).

Jeffrey Dvorkin is in the business of complaints and gripes and whines and rants. After all, it's his job. As the ombudsman for National Public Radio, he investigates and then responds to listener's questions and comments -- on anything from the war in Iraq, to covering the Bush administration, to the use of proper grammar.
Dvorkin aims to be that direct link between NPR and its listeners. At a time when the news media is under increased scrutiny, Dvorkin says NPR needs its own set of internal ears as a way of listening to critics and then responding. Whatever NPR used to be, it's changing, and the more the audience grows, the more NPR adapts and at the end, the listeners simply expect more. NPR's ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin on the news, on criticism, and on public radio today.

Sebastian Shaw is most widely known for his brief but mesmerizing performance as 'Darth Vader's face'/Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Return of The Jedi (1983). Almost anyone now recognizes the image of Vader's battered, bald head, gasping behind the dismantled breathing apparatus. Most of Shaw's fan base stems from the Star Wars connection. The film career of Sebastian Shaw spanned over sixty years! One can watch him star in films as a bright-eyed young man, and grow to a wise old gentleman right before your eyes. It's interesting to see this person, who's iconic face is familiar to millions, appear in costumes other than a black snowsuit and helmet.The staff at SebastianShaw.com has reviewed some of the best (and worst) movies that Shaw has been in.[Thanks to Al D. for creating the only comprehensive site devoted to Sebastian Shaw]

QUESTION: ..how is it the new [Social Security] plan is going to fix that problem?

THE PRESIDENT: Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised.

Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

The Bush administration's fiscal year 2006 budget assumes $2.54 billion in lease sales stemming from oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The provision, included in the Department of Interior's budget, is the first step in bypassing a ban on oil and gas exploration within the 19 million-acre refuge on Alaska's North Slope

While the proposed 2006 budget request is staggering, it's also deflated: At least $5 billion that could have been in the regular budget has been offloaded to a $75 billion "emergency supplemental" for 2005 to be released later in the week.
...The Army is doubling one small line item in its personnel budget: the money it devotes to apprehending deserters. It allocated $615,000 for that account in 2005 -- up from $470,000 in 2004. It wants $1.4 million for that effort now. The Army budget is now on par with the $1.6 million the Marine Corps spends annually apprehending deserters.

Rove, who was Bush's top political strategist during his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, will become a deputy White House chief of staff.
In that role, he will be in charge of coordinating policy between the White House Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.
"I appreciate Karl's willingness to continue to serve my administration in this new position," Bush said in a statement announcing the move.

If you're a fan of Alice Walker, now might be a good time to check out one her books from the library. One Alabama lawmaker has proposed a bill that may yank "The Color Purple," and many other classic works, from public bookshelves.
District 62 Representative, Gerald Allen, says he wants to ban books that, "...sanction, recognize, foster, or promote a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of the state." Allen says it falls right in line with the proposed ban on gay marriage. "A society cannot sustain itself through activities such as this," says Allen, "and for us to promote it with public dollars just doesn't make sense." For many, the proposed law itself doesn't make sense.

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

No money has been set aside for a vital servicing mission, which would replace the telescope's ageing batteries and gyros, but would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Instead, NASA has given Hubble just US$93 million, with the lion's share earmarked for nudging it out of orbit. NASA engineers are expected to deliver a report in March on how to retrieve the telescope safely.NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe says that the budget reflects President George W. Bush's commitment to manned space exploration missions, which has shifted the agency's focus towards the Moon and Mars.

According to estimates released Monday by the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, the number of Detroit residents dropped below 900,000 for the first time since 1920. The agency's estimate, as of Feb. 1, is 899,387.
That's a drop of 5.5 percent -- or 51,883 people -- since the 2000 U.S. census, which showed the city had dropped below the magic 1 million mark.

With a Bay Area company making international headlines by pioneering commercial cloning, a state legislator said Monday he will try to outlaw the practice in California.
Assembly member Lloyd Levine, D-Van Nuys, plans to introduce legislation banning the sale of cloned or genetically altered pets -- a measure that, if it were to become law, would slam the door on a Sausalito-based company's lucrative new business.
...Levine said the practice should be stopped because the nascent industry is unregulated and the pet world already suffers from overpopulation. More than 1 million animals are euthanized at California's shelters each year, he said.

Yesterday, I blooged about a new exploit that attacked internationalized browsers and made it easy to run "phishing" attacks against them. Frank sez, " Firefox and Mozilla builds for last night repair the disableIDN toggle functionality so that it works as designed. Now you can permanently protect your browser from IDN miscreants." As Waxy points out, that took about 12 hours. (Thanks, Frank!)

Some of America's great financial institutions are said to have been behind the scam. And if racketeering allegations contained in civil, criminal, and bankruptcy filings in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere are true, court judgments against U.S. banks, U.S. lawyers, and U.S. accountants could run to the tens of billions of dollars -- perhaps even enough to weaken pillars of the global banking system.
...Recent criminal-, civil-, and bankruptcy-court filings in the United States, Italy, the Cayman Islands, and elsewhere allege a vast conspiracy in which U.S. bankers (with the help of allegedly corrupt U.S. accounting firms and lawyers) concocted a financial house of mirrors designed to confuse credit analysts and bewitch investors into pouring billions of dollars into what turned out to be a looting trough.
If many of the alleged villains in the Parmalat debacle are U.S.-based, so are the victims. The list of investors allegedly defrauded by Parmalat-linked bankers prominently includes the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), which had an investment fund that owned Parmalat stock. (How much is not specified in the court filings I've seen.)

Unqualified US military medics stationed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison carried out amputations, recycled used chest tubes and lacked medical supplies to treat the overcrowded jail's inmates after the fall of Baghdad, according to a report.
The Time magazine report, to hit newsstands Monday, also said that a medic was ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide inside the jail.
Although the prison just outside Baghdad was jammed with as many as 7,000 detainees -- some of whom displayed serious mental illnesses -- no US doctor was in residence for most of 2003 following the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The documents show, for example, that Mr. Bush would cut spending for several programs that deal with epidemics, chronic diseases and obesity. His plan would also cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 9 percent, to $6.9 billion, the documents show.
The cuts are part of an attempt to control the federal deficit, while increasing spending on certain priority programs. Administration officials have said that in the budget, to be unveiled on Monday, Mr. Bush will propose that overall domestic spending, aside from entitlements, grows less than the rate of inflation next year.

H.R. 418 is the bill that contains the infamous "Section 102" -- which would give the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive, at his absolute discretion, any and all laws he deems necessary to waive in order to expedite construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the U.S. border. He decides what is necessary to waive! He decides the scope of his own authority, really, because his decision is NOT REVIEWABLE BY ANY COURT!

Rendition was originally carried out on a limited basis, but after September 11th, when President Bush declared a global war on terrorism, the program expanded beyond recognition—becoming, according to a former C.I.A. official, “an abomination.” What began as a program aimed at a small, discrete set of suspects—people against whom there were outstanding foreign arrest warrants—came to include a wide and ill-defined population that the Administration terms “illegal enemy combatants.” Many of them have never been publicly charged with any crime. Scott Horton, an expert on international law who helped prepare a report on renditions issued by N.Y.U. Law School and the New York City Bar Association, estimates that a hundred and fifty people have been rendered since 2001. Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, said that a more precise number was impossible to obtain. “I’ve asked people at the C.I.A. for numbers,” he said. “They refuse to answer. All they will say is that they’re in compliance with the law.”
Although the full scope of the extraordinary-rendition program isn’t known, several recent cases have come to light that may well violate U.S. law. In 1998, Congress passed legislation declaring that it is “the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.”
The Bush Administration, however, has argued that the threat posed by stateless terrorists who draw no distinction between military and civilian targets is so dire that it requires tough new rules of engagement. This shift in perspective, labelled the New Paradigm in a memo written by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, “places a high premium on . . . the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians,” giving less weight to the rights of suspects. It also questions many international laws of war. Five days after Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice-President Dick Cheney, reflecting the new outlook, argued, on “Meet the Press,” that the government needed to “work through, sort of, the dark side.” Cheney went on, “A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. And so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

My name is jane timi and i am 28 years old I am a very tolerant person and down to earth,dont intefer into other peoples buisness cos i like to respect their privacy.I am looking foe someone that i could confide in as a family and that could confide in me as well.I am open minded and also free with anyone.I am looking for someone that is honest and calm and most especially a tructworthy person. Please you could email me at jane_timi_2005@yahoo.com or if you have a yahoo messenger you could add me to your messenger list or set up a yahoo account so we can get talking,here is a link to my pic you can click on it to view my pic.My id is jane_timi_2005

Regards

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Well aren't you just a chocolate angel from Heaven above! Ngah-ha-wha!

My name is Hans McLir. I own several properties but now I am looking for a roomy for my personal estate in Detroit, MI. Ever since my partner/choreographer moved out in such a huff, I have been wrought
enjittered by my loneliness and nostalgia for the days of days gone by. Alas, the Paris of '77 will never return. But I digress.
Yes, darling, I do have a room available. I also see you are a model. Tell me, you look just like my favorite actress Moesha. Tell me is it you? Is this your coy way of responding to my fan mail?
Now that the aforemantioned Floyd is no longer handling my bookkeeping, I am beside myself with the tasks of the feduciaries and the modalities and sundry whatnots. Forgive me if I an unable to repond promptly.
I have enclosed a picture of myself from a recent Community Theater production.

Toodles,
-- Hans

-------------------

Thanks for the mail and i appreciate your efforts towards this,well i need more info from you regards to the room and also i need to know the depoist that i will be paying before i arrive,i am from ENGLAND,but currently based in west africa now with my mom because she works for a missionary school and she is posted down here,i want to move over to the US,Kindly get back to me ASAP with the deposit i need to pay because i will like to pay for the deposit before my arrival and i will like to know the total amount i will be paying for a whole year but i will like to pay the deposit first of all,I am single as i said and i dont have a bf presently,I do part time modelling and also i have finished with my
masters programme.I am coming over to your place,I am new with this roommates of a thing so i did not know how to update my profile.I do modell and i have job offers already in the US,I have my masters degree in accounting.My job will be based on contracts so i do not have to go to work all the time,I will only need to go to work 3 times in a week.I saw the pics you sent and its really cute.

Well, i think we will get along well because am a easy going person who respects ones privacy,like i said i dont do drugs or smoke but i drink only occasionally,i think i will enjoy to leave with you.I will be glad if you have a yahoo messenger so we can chat and talk more and get to know each other better,my yahoo messenger id is jane_timi if you have a yahoo account you can add me am allways online,or you can set up a yahoo account its free,well here is the link to my pic
http://profiles.yahoo.com/jane_timi_2005 you can click on that,i will love to see your pic as well.Please kindly get back to me ASAP.Hope to hear from you soon.

Regards

-------------------Dear Moesha,

Sweetheart, I cannot tell you what a godsend you are, given my current state of despair. When love leaves, the drabness of the heart seems beyond remedy. Then a light appears from the clear blue and shines the way.
I am delighted that you are an accountant. Perhaps it is premature to ask but if you are able to decrypt the labyrinthine finances of my personal holdings, I would be so enormously grateful. Tax time is fast approaching and the forms, the forms, the forms, they nibble like a zillion ducks at the humble loaf of bread which is my mind.
But I am jumping ahead.
So you wish to move to America my little gingersnap? Very well. I do have a marvelous room available. I should tell you it is Floyd's old room (or the "shrine to Floyd," as I now refer to it). Attached is a picture.
Floyd's tastes ran from the kitschy to the jejune and I trust you will refrain from touching any of the priceless artifacts.
The bed you can use. I will remove the zebra-skin blankets and preserve them properly in my underground vault.
Now I should warn you that I am of a persuasion that the unschooled may find eccentric. Ngyarng-ngyarng! Ex-squeeze me, did I say that?

Anyhoo, my daily regimen is very strict.
4:30am I awaken to Wagner on the Hi-Fi and proceed to engage in nude calisthenics and jogging in the wintry climes of my estate. I advise you to shutter your windows. No one needs to see a broken-hearted old
man dancing naked in the snow.
The purpose of this folly is merely cardiovascular. My only exhibitionism is the company of fellow thespians. Are you interested in the Theater?
7:00am sharp my servants provide a breakfast of carrots and imitation soy food cast into exotic shapes.
8:30am I continue working on my greatest invention ever! A piano! The largest piano ever built!
Interspersed, I divide my time between the house finances, kung fu and practicing show tunes. I have the lungs of a steamer ship and the walls in this overpriced mansion are thinner than the shim of a
scrim. I hope you like music.
Dinner is the time to entertain. Vodka, Jameson's and tequila all flow freely amid the appetizers of Cheeze-Its, dried mushrooms and beets.
Every Friday, I host the Detroit Whiffenpoofs  strapping young men one and all. There are a few I know less well than the others and perhaps you may find among them a good husband if you are into that
kind of thing.
10:00pm primal scream therapy
11:00pm a night cap
11:45pm bed.
I am a light sleeper so please don't make any noises. A bed pan will be provided to you to spare us both the creaky nuisance of nighttime bathroom trips.
In my spare time, I serve the great art of the Theater  my only enduring love, alas. Despite the bombasts, the prima donnas and the megalomaniacs, it has never played fickle with my tender heart.
My nickname in the local theater troupe is "the tyrant." You should know the name is earned as much from respect as from fear.
But I have rambled too much.

Let us now get down to business.
The deposit on the room is $10,000. Then it is $5,000 per month for a total of $60,000 per year.
However, you have shown such generosity that I am willing to waive the deposit entirely. I require only one condition: Allow me to teach you proper grammar. Your command of English is woeful and repugnant. If you are a model and an accountant, you must comport yourself in a manner befitting a lady of your intrinsic
beauty.
If I had not seen your picture I would have presumed you were some manner of petty thief given the coarseness of your linguistic habits. I demand nothing less than perfection from each and all for whom I
bless company. Those who devote themselves always find benefit and shower me with praise for my wisdom.
Except, of course, Floyd.
Excuse me, I must stop writing now.
Thank you for waiting.
As for the estate finances, I could use your advice on how to renew my property as an official wildlife preserve for the State of Michigan. My staff is completely flummoxed on this detail. Perhaps your
accounting experience may help.

So what do you say?
I shall teach you grammar and waive the deposit. Then you can move here far less expensively. I will teach to express yourself with greater precision and the rest is the humble bounty of my estate.
I am anxious to give you a tour of the grounds. There is a snake house, a monkey house, caribou, oxen, a heavily sedated Bengal tiger and dozens of parrots (the parrots must live indoors during these cold months). My dearest per, Olivier the llama, endures all the vicissitudes of the local climate. Llamas are very wise animals. To listen to their silence ennobles the soul.
Please write back soon as I am temperamental when patience defies me.

Thanks for the mail and i appreciate your efforts towards this,well i need more info from you regards to the room and also i need to know the depoist that i will be paying before i arrive,i am from ENGLAND,but currently based in west africa now with my mom because she works for a missionary school and she is posted down here,i want to move over to the US,Kindly get back to me ASAP with the deposit i need to pay because i will like to pay for the deposit before my arrival and i will like to know the total amount i will be paying for a whole year but i will like to pay the deposit first of all,I am single as i said and i dont have a bf presently,I do part time modelling and also i have finished with my
masters programme.I am coming over to your place,I am new with this roommates of a thing so i did not know how to update my profile.I do modell and i have job offers already in the US,I have my masters degree in accounting.My job will be based on contracts so i do not have to go to work all the time,I will only need to go to work 3 times in a week.I saw the pics you sent and its really cute.

Well, i think we will get along well because am a easy going person who respects ones privacy,like i said i dont do drugs or smoke but i drink only occasionally,i think i will enjoy to leave with you.I will be glad if you have a yahoo messenger so we can chat and talk more and get to know each other better,my yahoo messenger id is jane_timi if you have a yahoo account you can add me am allways online,or you can set up a yahoo account its free,well here is the link to my pic
http://profiles.yahoo.com/jane_timi_2005 you can click on that,i will love to see your pic as well.Please kindly get back to me ASAP.Hope to hear from you soon.

Videotapes of riot squads subduing troublesome terror suspects at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay show the guards punching some detainees, tying one to a gurney for questioning and forcing a dozen to strip from the waist down, according to a secret report. One squad was all-female, traumatizing some Muslim prisoners.Investigators from U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees the camp in Cuba, wrote the report that was obtained by The Associated Press after spending a little over a week in June reviewing 20 of some 500 hours of videotapes involving "Immediate Reaction Forces."The camp's layout prevented videotaping in all the cells where the five-person teams - also known as "Immediate Response Forces" - operated, the report said.

CCR filed new documents on January 31, 2005, with the German Federal Prosecutor looking into war crimes charges against high-ranking U.S. officials including Donald Rumsfeld: one includes new evidence that the Fay investigation into Abu Ghraib protected Administration officials – it is a comprehensive and shocking opinion by Scott Horton, an expert on international law and the Chair of the International Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. The second is a letter that details how Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee confirms his role as complicit in the torture and abuse of detainees in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq.

The hippies, for instance, were intensely entrepreneurial with their love beads and tie-dyed T-shirts. Ironically, their rejection of the consumerism of American society simply spawned new markets for goods. Punk rockers, too, have criticized the capitalist system but failed to upset it. In their first chapter, Heath and Potter raise the question, "Who Killed Kurt Cobain?" Their answer: The counterculture. The notion that "alternative" rockers could not be authentic and popular, too, did him in. Cobain committed suicide rather than risk "selling out."
Next, the authors analyze the psychological underpinnings of the counterculture in their chapter "Freud Goes to California." Freud, they say, believed in the importance of civilization even though it limited individual freedom. The counterculture, on the other hand, chose to elevate individual freedom over civilization. They condemn the widespread individualism of the counterculture for making it difficult to organize social movements. Engaging in guerrilla theater might be fun, they say, but it does not solve serious problems.
With biting wit, the authors expose what they see as the hypocrisy of anticonsumer critiques of capitalism. Arguments against consumerism, they say, are merely snobbish putdowns of what other people buy. Budweiser is bad, single-malt liquor is good; hamburger is bad; risotto good; Chryslers bad, Volvo good; and so on.
In actuality, they argue, the anticonsumer movement has found its most fertile ground in the United States. Antimaterialism has become a cash cow, they say, offering expensive handmade goods to those willing to afford them. But does buying "all-natural organic tea" make you more virtuous? No, they say, it just helps a new market grow.

Wilmut and Christopher Shaw, a motor neuron expert of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, plan to clone cells from patients with the incurable muscle-wasting disease. They would then derive blank-slate stem cells from the cloned embryo, and allow them to develop into nerve cells. This would then be compared with nerve cells derived from healthy embryos.
The mechanism behind motor neuron disease is poorly understood because researchers cannot access the nerves in the brain and central nervous system and also cannot be removed from the patients.

It costs American businesses more than $22bn a year to delete spam, according to a new study from the University of Maryland.
The National Technology Readiness Survey produced by Rockbridge Associates worked out this figure by adding up the number of people who receive spam, multiplying that figure by the number of spam emails they receive and calculating the average time spent deleting them.
Since the average number of spams is about 18.5 a day [cough. Ed.] it takes 2.5 minutes of your life to delete them. If you multiply this by the average cost of an employee and divide by your shoe size you get the figure of $22bn.
According to Associated Press, 14 per cent of spam recipients actually read messages to see what they say, and four per cent of the recipients have bought something advertised through spam within the past year. Interestingly enough, this figure must be about the same figure for the cost of allowing your employees to go to the toilet. It would be double that if they took a newspaper. With billions wasted like this, it is a wonder anyone in America makes any money at all You can gasp at all the figures here.

[Audio] As we reported last month, one of the first moves taken by new CNN president Jonathan Klein was to cancel the network’s signature shout-fest, Crossfire. The response from the critics? Enthusiastic to say the least. But at least one pundit doesn’t agree that this model of political debate is, as Jon Stewart recently put it, “hurting America.” Michael Kinsley, one-time host of Crossfire and current opinion and editorial editor at the L.A. Times, wrote a fond eulogy for the show. He joins us to defend Crossfire’s sullied reputation. [from OnTheMedia.org]

[Audio] What makes the mainstream media mainstream? In 2004, the initials MSM became shorthand for critiques of the media as varied as, well, the media itself. Some likened the mainstream media to a dying political party. Others compared the MSM to the struggling legacy airline carriers. But whatever the metaphor, NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, author of the weblog PRESSthink.org, tells Brooke that using the phrase is really just the easiest way to convey whatever you don’t like about the state of the news. [from OnTheMedia.org]

The federal government spent $88.2m on contracts with public relations agencies last year, according to a report last month by congressional Democrats. That is up from $39m in 2000.
The payments have drawn criticism since the disclosure that Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, had received $241,000 from the Department of Education to promote the administration's "No Child Left Behind" initiative in television and radio appearances. Other such payments have recently ome to light, including $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services to a syndicated columnist to promote the president's pro-marriage proposals.

For the first time in his administration, President Bush is proposing a net reduction in financing for the Department of Education, seeking to reduce its budget by about 1 percent, to $56 billion, for the 2006 fiscal year.
About $4.7 billion would be redirected from 64 education programs to finance other initiatives, mainly aimed at high school students, special education and college loan financing, according to the budget summary issued yesterday.

The government is now spending more than $5.6 billion a year on the 18 programs, which include the Community Development Block Grant, a lifeline for many impoverished urban neighborhoods. For the new program, Bush will request $3.7 billion, a cut of about 33 percent.

That development, epidemiologists say, is attributable to socioeconomic and demographic conditions specific to many African American communities. Black neighborhoods, they say, are more likely to be plagued by joblessness, poverty, drug use and a high ratio of women to men, a significant portion of whom cycle in and out of a prison system where the rate of HIV infection is estimated to be as much as 10 times higher than in the general population.

My name is jane timi and i am 28 years old I am a very tolerant personand down to earth,dont intefer into other peoples buisness cos i liketo respect their privacy.I am looking foe someone that i could confidein as a family and that could confide in me as well.I am open mindedand also free with anyone.I am looking for someone that is honest andcalm and most especially a tructworthy person. Please you could emailme at jane_timi_2005@yahoo.com or if you have a yahoo messenger youcould add me to your messenger list or set up a yahoo account so wecan get talking,here is a link to my pic you can click on it to viewmy pic.My id is jane_timi_2005Regards

Well aren't you just a chocolate angel from Heaven above! Ngah-ha-wha!

My name is Hans McLir. I own several properties but now I am lookingfor a roomy for my personal estate in Detroit, MI. Ever since mypartner/choreographer moved out in such a huff, I have been wroughtenjittered by my loneliness and nostalgia for the days of days goneby. Alas, the Paris of '77 will never return. But I digress.

Yes, darling, I do have a room available. I also see you are a model.Tell me, you look just like my favorite actress Moesha. Tell me isit you? Is this your coy way of responding to my fan mail?

Now that the aforemantioned Floyd is no longer handling mybookkeeping, I am beside myself with the tasks of the feduciaries andthe modalities and sundry whatnots. Forgive me if I an unable torepond promptly.

I have enclosed a picture of myself from a recent Community Theater production.

Sweetheart, I cannot tell you what a godsend you are, given my currentstate of despair. When love leaves, the drabness of the heart seemsbeyond remedy. Then a light appears from the clear blue and shinesthe way.

I am delighted that you are an accountant. Perhaps it is premature toask but if you are able to decrypt the labyrinthine finances of mypersonal holdings, I would be so enormously grateful. Tax time isfast approaching and the forms, the forms, the forms, they nibble likea zillion ducks at the humble loaf of bread which is my mind.

But I am jumping ahead.

So you wish to move to America my little gingersnap? Very well. I dohave a marvelous room available. I should tell you it is Floyd's oldroom (or the "shrine to Floyd," as I now refer to it). Attached is apicture.

Floyd's tastes ran from the kitschy to the jejune and I trust you willrefrain from touching any of the priceless artifacts.

The bed you can use. I will remove the zebra-shin blankets andpreserve them properly in my underground vault.

Now I should warn you that I am of a persuasion that the unschooledmay find eccentric. Ngyarng-ngyrang! Ex-squeeze me, did I say that?

Anyhoo, my daily regimen is very strict.

4:30am I awaken to Wagner on the Hi-Fi and proceed to engage in nudecalisthenics and jogging in the wintry climes of my estate. I adviseyou to shutter your windows. No one needs to see a broken-hearted oldman dancing naked in the snow.

The purpose of this folly is merely cardiovascular. My onlyexhibitionism is the company of fellow thespians. Are you interestedin the Theater?

8:30am I continue working on my greatest invention ever! A piano!The largest piano ever built!

Interspersed, I divide my time between the house finances, kung fu andpracticing show tunes. I have the lungs of a steamer ship and thewalls in this overpriced mansion mare thinner than the shim of ascrim. I hope you like music.

Dinner is the time to entertain. Vodka, Jameson's and tequila allflow freely amid the appetizers of Cheeze-Its, dried mushrooms andbeets.

Every Friday, I host the Detroit Whiffenpoofs  strapping young menone and all. There are a few I know less well than the others andperhaps you may find among them a good husband if you are into thatkind of thing.

10:00pm primal scream therapy

11:00pm a night cap

11:45pm bed.

I am a light sleeper so please don't make any noises. A bed pan willbe provided to you to spare us both the creaky nuisance of nighttimebathroom trips.

In my spare time, I serve the great art of the Theater  my onlyenduring love, alas. Despite the bombasts, the prima donnas and themegalomaniacs, it has never played fickle with my tender heart.

My nickname in the local theater troupe is "the tyrant." You shouldknow the name is earned as much from respect as from fear.

But I have rambled too much.

Let us now get down to business.The deposit on the room is $10,000. Then it is $5,000 per month for atotal of $60,000 per year.

However, you have shown such generosity that I am willing to waive thedeposit entirely. I require only one condition:

Allow me to teach you proper grammar. Your command of English iswoeful and repugnant. If you are a model and an accountant, you mustcomport yourself in a manner befitting a lady of your intrinsicbeauty.

If I had not seen your picture I would have presumed you were somemanner of petty thief given the coarseness of your linguistic habits.

I demand nothing less than perfection from each and all for whom Ibless company. Those who devote themselves always find benefit andshower me with praise for my wisdom.

Except, of course, Floyd.

Excuse me, I must stop writing now.

Thank you for waiting.

As for the estate finances, I could use your advice on how to renew myproperty as an official wildlife preserve for the State of Michigan.My staff is completely flummoxed on this detail. Perhaps youraccounting experience may help.

So what do you say?

I shall teach you grammar and waive the deposit. Then you can movehere far less expensively. I will teach to express yourself withgreater precision and the rest is the humble bounty of my estate.

I am anxious to give you a tour of the grounds. There is a snakehouse, a monkey house, caribou, oxen, a heavily sedated Bengal tigerand dozens of parrots (the parrots much live indoors during these coldmonths). My dearest per, Olivier the llama, endures all thevicissitudes of the local climate. Llamas are very wise animals. Tolisten to their silence ennobles the soul.

A Florida State University center has used more than a half-million in education tax dollars to put a positive spin on President Bush's key school policies, including hiring a public relations firm to teach charter schools to be more media-savvy.
...In recent weeks, federal agencies have acknowledged using tax dollars to pay columnists to push Bush policies, including the No Child Left Behind Act. Critics argue that using public money for media campaigns could be considered illegal.
Since 2003, taxpayers have given the center $627,567 as part of a 5-year, $1.2 million federal grant made available through the No Child Left Behind Act, which promotes school choice as a fix for failing public schools.

Several organizations, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Progressive Policy Institute, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the Center for Security Policy, and the Center for American Progress have drafted a new call for congressional leaders to increase the size of active duty military forces. (Read more on IRC online)

"Especially troubling are the $60 billion in cuts to nursing homes for the elderly under Medicaid, requirements for veterans to pay nearly two times as much for prescription drugs, and cuts to local law-enforcement and firefighters who are the first to be called in the event of a terrorist attack," Mr. Moran said. [emphasis added]
The administration wants to cut the Justice Department's Community Oriented Policing Services program, designed to help localities hire more police officers, by 96 percent. The proposal also calls for a cut to the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, a program designed to provide loans and grant money to development projects, from $250 million last year to $8 million.

Parents in a northern California public school district and civil liberties groups are urging a school district to terminate the mandatory use of Radio Frequency Identification tags ( RFIDs ) by students. Several civil liberties groups, including the ACLU of Northern California ( ACLU-NC ), Electronic Frontier Foundation ( EFF ), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center ( EPIC ) sent a letter today expressing alarm at the Brittan School District's use of mandatory ID badges that include a RFID device that tracks the students' movements. The device transmits private information to a computer on campus whenever a student passes under one of the scanners. The ID badges also include the student's name, photo, grade, school name, class year and the four-digit school ID number. Students are required to prominently display the badges by wearing them around the neck at all times.
"Forcing my child to be tracked with a RFID device – without our consent or knowledge – is a complete invasion of our privacy," said Michael and Dawn Cantrall.

[T]he Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) released logfinder, a software tool to help people reduce the unnecessary collection of personal information about computer users. Often computer network servers automatically log information about who has visited a website and when, or who has sent and received email. Such data tells a lot about a user's browsing and email habits and could be used in privacy-invasive ways. Moreover, log data must be turned over to government entities with court orders and can be subpoenaed by opposing sides in court cases.
By finding unwanted log files, logfinder informs system administrators when their servers are collecting personal data and gives them the opportunity to turn logging off if it isn't gathering information necessary for administering the system.
Logfinder was conceived by security consultant Ben Laurie and written by EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. It's intended to complement EFF's recent white paper, "Best Practices for Online Service Providers," in which the organization argues that administrators should remove as many logs as possible and delete all personally identifying data from them.

"People who choose to follow our recommendations in the white paper might not know what kinds of logs they have," said Schoen. "Logfinder is an example of one way a system administrator could become aware of the presence of logs, as well as discover sensitive information being collected in known logs."

"This is probably our best shot at actually getting it through and to the president's desk," said House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, the Tracy Republican who has become the House's most vocal advocate for drilling in the refuge.
"I'm optimistic that we finally have a chance to get it done."
Pombo's committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday and is expected to approve a new energy bill that will include provisions to open the Alaskan refuge to drilling. The bill is nearly identical to one passed by the House last year, although it would add a requirement for speedier decisions by federal agencies on lease applications and permits to drill for oil and gas on public lands.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Details of a novel microprocessor design that could supercharge many computing applications were released at an industry conference in California, US, on Monday.
The microprocessor architecture - known as Cell - will appear in the Playstation3 games console, scheduled for release in 2006. But experts say it could ultimately find its way into many home entertainment devices, high-end computers and even supercomputers.
Details of the chip were disclosed at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, stirring debate over the possible implications for the computer industry.

The president would increase the co-payment for a month's supply of a prescription drug to $15, from the current $7. The administration says the co-payment and the $250 "user fee" would apply mainly to veterans in lower-priority categories, who have higher incomes and do not have service-related disabilities.
The government had no immediate estimate of how many veterans would be affected if the user fee and co-payment proposals were adopted. But veterans' groups said that hundreds of thousands of people would end up paying more and that many would be affected by both changes.

Worried that the nation's aging nuclear arsenal is increasingly fragile, American scientists have begun designing a new generation of nuclear arms meant to be sturdier and more reliable and to have longer lives, federal officials and private experts say.The officials say the program could help shrink the arsenal and the high cost of its maintenance. But critics say it could needlessly resuscitate the complex of factories and laboratories that make nuclear weapons and could possibly ignite a new arms race.

So far, the quiet effort involves only $9 million for warhead designers at the nation's three nuclear weapon laboratories, Los Alamos, Livermore and Sandia. Federal bomb experts at these heavily guarded facilities are now scrutinizing secret arms data gathered over a half century for clues about how to achieve the new reliability goals.

Your car is most likely recording things about your driving and that information can be used against you if you have a traffic accident.
Most people don't know their car has a black box. They are similar to ones in airplanes, although they don't record voices, but they do record plenty of other things that happen before a crash.

Gonzales plans to name Ted Ullyot to be his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson as his deputy chief of staff, and Raul Yanes as counselor, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. All three have been lawyers in the White House counsel's office under Gonzales.If the names sound familiar, it may be because Ullyot and Yanes were the coordinators of the White House's response to the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. That investigation is being handled by, uh, the Justice Department.
Gonzales, who had been called before the grand jury in the case, has recused himself in the Plame probe, as promised during his confirmation and as predecessor John D. Ashcroft had done. It remains to be seen whether Gonzales will also have Ullyot, Sampson and Yanes recused, or whether he will take further steps to shield Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, from political influence.

Reporters who cover the White House are accustomed to being spun by administration officials. The modern presidential toolbox includes carefully rationed press conferences, say-nothing spokesmen, dead-of-night releases of unfavorable news, and phony "town hall" meetings composed solely of sycophantic supporters. More recently, government agencies have issued fake-news videos and secretly contracted with two pundits to promote the administration's policies on education and marriage.
But now the art of press handling has evolved into actual manhandling. The Bush team has expanded the use of "minders," employees or volunteers who escort journalists from interview to interview within a venue or at a newsworthy event.

A team at Japan's Kyoto University Hospital removed islet cells from the healthy woman, and transplanted them into her 27-year-old daughter.
The breakthrough could be a much more effective way to treat type 1 diabetes.
Islet cells have previously been taken from dead organ donors and were often damaged from cold storage or by toxins in the blood after death.

The US military gave anthrax shots to more than 900 soldiers after a federal judge ordered a halt to the mandatory vaccination program last October, according to news reports this week.The Department of Defense (DoD) said that 931 people were "mistakenly vaccinated" after US District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the program stopped on Oct 27, 2004, according to a Feb 1 Associated Press report. The story said 150 service members were vaccinated in January.
In a lawsuit brought by six service members and civilian defense workers, Sullivan ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had not followed proper procedures in approving the use of anthrax vaccine adsorbed for inahalational anthrax.

"Massively financed by, first private, and now public dollars, the campaign to create the perception of an alternative, conservative Black 'leadership' is on the march in all regions of the nation," writes the Black Commentator in an article titled "Bribes + Vouchers = Black Bush Supporters." The article shows how "black leaders" who recently posted for a photo op with Bush were the recipients of millions of dollars in funding from right-wing foundations as well as from government programs launched by the Bush administration. "The Republicans need only a few Black faces to fill up a room, or a television screen, and only a modest number of Black congregations to demonstrate newfound credibility in the community," the article observes. "They can achieve this at literally no cost, since faith-based and voucher advocacy ('public education') grants are paid for with tax dollars – public money. ... For every outraged Black preacher howling that he’s giving up on the Democrats because of the gays, there is a check or the promise of a check." [from PRWatch.org]

Now available to the public for the first time are Woodward and Bernstein's notes from source interviews, drafts of newspaper stories and books, memos, letters, tape recordings, research materials, and other Watergate papers. These materials document Woodward and Bernstein's four-year partnership telling the story of Watergate in Pulitzer Prize winning articles for The Washington Post, in two best-selling novels, All The President's Men and The Final Days, and in the multiple academy award-winning movie of All the Presidents Men. Purchased by The University of Texas at Austin in 2003, the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers provide students, scholars, and other researchers a unique resource for behind the scenes insight into the journalism, politics, and humanity of Watergate.

Now available to the public for the first time are Woodward and Bernstein's notes from source interviews, drafts of newspaper stories and books, memos, letters, tape recordings, research materials, and other Watergate papers. These materials document Woodward and Bernstein's four-year partnership telling the story of Watergate in Pulitzer Prize winning articles for The Washington Post, in two best-selling novels, All The President's Men and The Final Days, and in the multiple academy award-winning movie of All the Presidents Men. Purchased by The University of Texas at Austin in 2003, the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers provide students, scholars, and other researchers a unique resource for behind the scenes insight into the journalism, politics, and humanity of Watergate.

At a news conference in Manhattan yesterday, Harry Belafonte, with tears in his eyes, compared Mr. Davis to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, W. E .B. DuBois and Fanny Lou Hamer, all of whom were Mr. Davis's friends. In particular, Mr. Davis remained fiercely loyal to Robeson even as he was denounced by other show-business figures for his openly Communist sympathies.
In 1965, Mr. Davis delivered the eulogy at the funeral of Malcolm X, calling him "our shining black prince," and he spoke it again in a voiceover for the 1992 Spike Lee film, "Malcolm X." In 1968, he eulogized Dr. King.
It was partly through Spike Lee movies that Mr. Davis and Ms. Dee became known to a new generation. Mr. Davis appeared in Mr. Lee's "School Daze," "Do the Right Thing" and "Jungle Fever." Ms. Dee appeared in the latter two.
Early in their careers, Mr. Davis co-starred with Ms. Dee when, on Aug. 31, 1959, he took over from Sidney Poitier the role of Walter Lee in "A Raisin in the Sun, " the hit drama about the aspirations of a black family. (Ms. Dee created the role of his wife, Ruth.) It was written by Lorraine Hansberry and directed by Mr. Richards, and is often seen as a milestone in drama by and about blacks.
Mr. Davis never stopped working, his son recalled, adding that he used his waiting time on the set to write plays on his laptop computer. In 1996, he recreated a 1986-87 stage role in the movie "I'm Not Rappaport," and in 1997 he appeared on television in "Miss Evers' Boys" and "Twelve Angry Men." [thanks to Sharon, one of Ossie's big fans]

The Flat Earth Award was created as a humorous effort to highlight the denial of global warming by prominent public figures. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions are altering the global climate, some deniers remain. They are trying to convince the public and our government that a massive peer-reviewed international research project conducted by thousands of scientific researchers is bogus!

Radioactive depleted uranium that the Army left behind at Jefferson Proving Ground won't be discussed anymore by the JPG Restoration Advisory Board.
The reason is that DU never should have been a topic for the board because it doesn't fit into the federal government's definition of what can be addressed by restoration advisory boards at closed military bases, board co-chairman Paul Cloud told board members last night.
Depleted uranium has been a major topic at the JPG board's quarterly meetings. The area at the former munitions testing site that is contaminated with DU is fenced off, and the Army says it can never remove the depleted uranium because the same area contains tons of unexploded ordnance, making removal too dangerous.

"After brief pleasantries on the phone the other day," writes Jeffrey Birnbaum, "Thomas J. Donohue got down to business with a top health insurance executive. 'We're in a new year and a new time,' Donohue said smoothly. 'Can we put you on the list and get your money?' The executive said yes, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was $100,000 richer. So, in effect, was President Bush's push to rein in trial lawyers and lower taxes." Birnbaum shows how Donohue and the chamber have led a "quiet revolution in business lobbying," marked by massive increases in corporate spending and close allegiance to the Bush administration's political agenda. [from PRWatch.org]

Japan has already dabbled here and there with road surfaces that keep drivers awake by using appropriately-placed troughs to play rhythms through your tires.
Now the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has gone a step further, with grooved sections of road that boom a melody up through your car. The grooves are a few millimetres deep and 6-12 mm wide; unsurprisingly, the closer they're grouped together the higher the pitch of the note produced.
They're planning to use different melodies for different areas, picking songs that have some association to the locale.

The Times’ effort to get to the bottom of the matter through a serious investigation seemed to be a striking exception. That investigation, however, despite extensive reporting over several weeks by three Times reporters, never ran. Now, like the mythic weapons of mass destruction that were the raison d’etre for the Iraq War, the Times is thus far claiming that the Bush Bulgegate story never existed in the first place.

To read the full ruling, click here.
There has been a steady evolution of the institution of marriage throughout history which belies the concept of a static traditional definition. Marriage, as it is understood today, is both a partnership of two loving equals who choose to commit themselves to each other and a State institution designed to promote stability for the couple and their children. The relationships of plaintiffs fit within this definition of marriage.
Similar to opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples are entitled to the same fundamental right to follow their hearts and publicly commit to a lifetime partnership with the person of their choosing. The recognition that this fundamental right applies equally to same-sex couples cannot legitimately be said to harm anyone.